Animation Fundamentals Project III: Final Action Sequence

 MODULE GCD61104: Animation Fundamentals 

Tristan Vaughan Sleep - 0365120

Animation Fundamentals / Bachelor of Design (Hons) in Creative Media

Project III: Final Animated Production

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MODULE INSTRUCTIONS:

“SEPT 2024 - JAN 2025: GCD 61104 / ANIM. FUNDAMENTALS MODULE INFORMATION BOOKLET”

Project I: Animated Production of Walking and Jumping Characters

Project II a - Final Animation: Students of the cohort are expected to utilise their previous character design as well their animation skills to produce a short animation of an action sequence featuring their character. Using the skills mentioned within the lectures, students are expected to develop a short 5 - 10 second long animation capturing their characters physical movement and performance within the already designed environment. The action is recommended to be either a fighting scene, energetic chase or any sports-related activity. The animation should be in the recommended dimension and should be shot on ‘twos’ or 2 held frames/ 24fps. The final animation should then be posted to the necessary locations as outlined by the lecturer.

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PARTICIPATED LECTURES:

WEEK IX - XIV: Final Action Animation project

Basics: Marking the final major project required by the module, students are expected to utilise the most of their animation skills and design a 5 to 10 second physical action sequence of their character. The action sequence should involve some form of physical movement, being a potential fighting sequence, energetic chase or any sports-related activity. The goal is for the students to develop a clear understanding of the desired outcomes, key actions, and the emotions required in the scene. To support students, they are allowed to look online for sequences which they can reference their work on; however, they cannot copy the found reference and need to incorporate some more original ideas.

Starting Concept: Looking back at the inspirations of my original character and how I wanted to portray them, I wanted to create a short animation demonstrating the abilities in a slap-stick way during a chase scene. The idea would be that the character works within the city and acts as some enforcement figure and chases down criminals and other forms of bad-actors. To make this animation feel more unique compared to a normal chase, I wanted to incorporate features more exclusive to the character, focusing on how their unique body type may allow for a creative flow of movement during the chase.

Storyboarding: To begin starting this project, it was important for me to first plan out how I wanted my animation to play out as well as looking into how many assets I would need to create in order to populate the shots. During my concepting phase, I already knew that my animation would focus on my character’s agility and would see them skillfully manoeuvring around obstacles in their path; however, I needed to find a more grounded reason as to why they would be ‘chasing.’ Thus, I wanted to open my animation with a shot of an antagonist fleeing from my character and another supporting character before giving chase. Ultimately providing a well established goal for my character.

For the main section of the animation, my character would progress over a series of obstacles before catching themselves at an awkward angle and failing, showing off some more slap-stick humour around the project. For the obstacles, I had planned to reference some footage of ‘free-running’ and looking at how runners would creatively vault over or slide under objects. The idea would be that the character leads with a slide which is followed up by two alternating side vaults and finishing with either a dashing-vault or kong-vault. This final vault would then see the character catching their foot on the edge, leading to them tumbling over off-screen and seeing them come sliding back into the shot.

“Hastily Drawn Storyboard - original higher quality is missing”

While this was the original plan, I needed to pull back on the project a little due to the amount of time I would have to work on the project and how long the video length was allowed to be. As a result, I ended up shortening the Action sequence by cutting out the first two vaults. While they are useful in showing agility, they were in essence the same animation just performed with a different leading foot and thus, decided to cut them from the project.

Animating and Layering: With everything set-up and ready to begin animating, it was crucial for me to be aware of separation between assets when animating. While the image remains flat, I am able to add in additional details such as perspective or timing control by placing assets on their own layers and animating them separately from one another. To start this process, I began by working on the motions of the main character. Following the examples and lessons discussed in the Animator’s Survival Kit, I had created a short sprinting animation in the same way that I’d created the walking animation previously. This new animation however was to be a lot more lively, showing rapid change in the characters form and even involving Squash and Stretch.

With a rough animation created, I was able to establish a ‘running speed’ of the character which would dictate how quickly the obstacles would enter and leave the frame which would allow me to plan for how long each action should take. Finding that my character moved at around 12 steps per frame, I could begin animating motions such as the slide and the vault as I now knew how fast they would need to be to keep the character in the centre of the screen. Interestingly, I decided to deviate somewhat from this timing when it came to the vaulting of the box in the animation. I decided to add a small low-down sequence just as the character trips to highlight their loss of balance before speeding back up to allow the character to fall off-screen. 

With the main action achieved, I began working on the background which consisted of background tiles which could be repeated in order to fill the scene. However, in order to make the background a little more appealing, I wanted to add perspective into the piece by creating different layers to the city. This perspective shift could also be animated with the background moving at different frame-rates similar to how further objects remain more static while closer objects move quicker in our vision. A similar was also achieved with the props in the background which moved slightly faster than the background to create the illusion of depth. Another inclusion would’ve been some Foreground objects to make the space feel more open; however, it was recommended by the lecturer to not include them.

“Final Animation”

Final Additions: To finally warp up the project, I wanted to add smaller details to help enhance the main action depicted within the scene. This mainly came in the form of adding minor dust kick-ups whenever the character would slide or as they had fallen to give the animation a little bit more emphasis. This is important to consider as the animation has no audio associated with it which normally would help in this regard. Overall, I’m quite happy with how the final animation came out however, I do feel like I could’ve done more in some sections. I mainly feel I could’ve included the opening shot (which I didn’t due to time restraints) as well as populating the background more to make the world feel more lived in and natural.